This Fall continues to shape up to be huge with regards to Star Trek on home video with a ton of releases already announced and Paramount and CBS just added two new ‘Best of’ DVDs (TOS & TNG). We also have revised art for the Season 2 TOS Blu-ray and some clarifying details on the HD DS9 and TAS episodes in that release. Finally we have a guide to all the upcoming Trek home video releases.

New ‘Best of’ SetsIn May CBS and Paramount released their first ‘Best of’ sets (one each for Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek The Next Generation – see TrekMovie review). Each was budget priced at around $10 (discounted) and contained a single disk of four ‘best’ episodes with no special features. Apparently that first wave did well as they have just announced two ‘Volume 2s’.

The Best of Star Trek: The Original Series Volume 2

The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation Volume 2

Both are standard DVD and both will be released on November 17th, the same day as the Star Trek feature film. The TOS episodes will all be the digitally remastered versions with new CGI effects. And today TVShowsOnDVD has reported the TOS and TNG episode lists and cover art (these are not considered final).

Best of TOS Vol. 2

Where No Man Has Gone Before

Space Seed

A Piece of the Action

Journey to Babel

Best of TOS Vol. 2

Relics

The Inner Light

Cause and Effect

Tapestry

Next Best of Trek sets (not final art)

TOS Season 2 Blu-ray Update: DS9 & TAS HD details + Final box art
One of the most exciting releases coming up is for the remastered Star Trek Season 2, coming out September 22nd. We have previously reported on the set details and the box art. One of the questions that came up regarded the ‘Tribble Disk’ and the included HD versions the TAS episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles" and the DS9 episode "Trials And Tribble-ations". TrekMovie asked how the two episodes were transferred for HD on the Blu-ray set. In the case of the animated episode, CBS confirmed it is an HD transfer from the original negative, just like the the rest of the TOS set, however the DS9 episode is an ‘upconvert’. According to CBS, they had "no choice." The spokesperson for CBS tells TrekMovie "the f/x shots were edited on video so there are no existing opticals for us to do a true HD transfer. Hence, we had no choice but to just do an upconversion."

Also, we now have a revised final version of the box art. Nitpicky Trekkies will be pleased to know the blue box art is now matched with the science symbol on the rendered badge.

Final box art for TOS S2 Blu-ray (click to enlarge)

UPDATE: Paramount joins RedBox trial
Paramount Home Entertainment announced today that they have entered into an agreement with RedBox, the fast-growing new $1/day DVD rental vending machine service from Coinstar. Paramount will try out the service for four months with an option to extend the deal for four years. RedBox kiosks are are available at many convenience stores, McDonald’s, and other retail locations. Paramount movies should be showing up soon, and will include the new Star Trek movie when it is released November 17th. More info at RedBox.com.

Redbox kiosk in a grocery store

STAR TREK FALL ON HOME VIDEO

This Fall there are quite a few releases for Star Trek coming out, here is a full breakdown with pre-order links.

Balance of Terror
Amok Time
Trouble With Tribbles
City on the Edge of Forever

However, for volume 2, I only agree with two of the four eps:

Where No Man Has Gone Before
Space Seed

The other two eps in volume 2, Piece of the Action and Journey to Babel where merely average TOS eps. There were many better eps than these which didn’t make the “best of” volumes.

In Canada, the Space Channel is running a TOS episode marathon on Labour Day and they’re showing the top ten Remastered TOS eps as voted by viewers. My “top ten” list is:

1 Where No Man Has Gone Before
2 The Doomsday Machine
3 Space Seed
4 Balance of Terror
5 Amok Time
6 Mirror, Mirror
7 The Trouble With Tribbles
8 The Enterprise Incident
9 Requiem For Methuselah
10 City on the Edge of Forever

I’ve heard that all effects were shot on film with editing done on video. In the case of trials and tribulations inserting people into the background scene would probably be considered editing and not an effect.

My guess is that the cost of re-editing this episode would cost a lot more than a normal episode and is probably the true reason why they didn’t give us the HD version. I can only hope that soon they will do a full season by season HD transfer of the other 25 seasons of star trek.

@7: I imagine they included Journey to Babel caus it introduced Sarek and Amanda — major component of Spock’s character development.
A Piece of the Action, well… Kirk and Spock rocking fedoras and badass pinstripes? Do we really need another reason? :D

@9: How did you infer that? Besides, the originals are 40+ years old — they’ll probably crumble if you give them a dirty look.

That said, I don’t love these packaging designs. I wish they had done something like the teaser poster–made the background look like uniforms and -then- have the symbols. The font also bugs me, but oh well.

#11–I was thinking that same exact thing. Although, to be fair, at least they listened to us the fans for like the first time in RECENT memory as far as fan outcry about an “already made” decision…..hope that sounded as good as it does in my head lol

So has any one spotted where in Star Trek viewing they have seen the + emblem badge in any video footage, I never recall seeing any sight of one. I still think it is only just a promo made emblem, or the medical union demanded a new emblem since they no longer wish to be united with provable science. And the science department agreed just so they would not have to read the trillions of pages of garbage they would need to read to stop being bugged by unions.

#17 DC – remember money will make people listen far faster than a bunch of negative letters will create corrective actions. All it would take is some Paramount bean counter to say they may lose money if things are not fixed. And before that person finished the sentence someone would have started fixing problems. As said way back in history money can buy many things, but love is not one of them, but it will let your rent lust.

The problem that I have with the “Best of” series is that it’s so subjective. Who decides it’s the best of and if I have the series already, why should i buy it again? What if I buy, watch it and decide the episodes they picked were not the best of. Sorry, but I’ll pass.

Are these “best of” sets replacing the fan collectives? If so, I’m very disappointed…the fan collectives (Alternate Realities, Time Travel, Borg, Klingon, Q) were great, being able to watch the best themes or aliens of star trek all together. Not to mention they spanned all the series, appealing to all Trek fans.

Too bad the DS9 epsiode isn’t true HD. I am in the process of rewatching DS9 and am now well into the 4th season. This show looks truly great. I would love to see it in HD sometime, as the standings sets, makeup and other “real-life” effects are top notch. Too bad the FX were only done in SD, but since that was even way before DVDs were commonplace that is no suprise.

I would be REALLY interested in knowing if the original negatives of the model shots still exist. If so, they could be used to recreate the cut of the episode. All ship shots after the Sacrifice of Angels two-parter are digital though, so they’d have to be recreated from scratch.

It could be done, but as always it will be the question of how much it will cost to make and how much it is bound to bring in. But before DS9 TNG is a much more likely candidate.

I bought the HD-DVD TOS Season 1 and then I bought all three repackaged earlier in the year in DVD sets that match the new Blu-Ray art.

Does anyone else feel dissapointed in the transfers?

As far as I could tell the film look ok but the there is a lot of DVD compression issues, not film noise but just fuzz that detracts from the episodes.

I compared the bitrate from the original DVD sets to the new ones, the originals were encoded at about 5 or 6kbps, the new ones have the film footage at 3 and the new SFX shots at about 6 or 7 so most of the live action looks pretty bad, anyone else notice this?

Fantastic choices for the TNG best of set..those are my top very favorite episodes.

I will still wait for TNG-R regardless of how long it takes…I hope that they (paramount) dosent just release TNG , Voyager , and Enterprise (other than the digital episodes) sets as upconverts on blu-ray.

Where the TOS season two Blu-ray is concerned, I can’t understand the fascination with Tribbles. Sure it was a fun little episode, but not really deserving of a disc to itself. Also ‘Trials and Tribbleations’ was little more than a Berman-era ‘lets all laugh at TOS’ gimmick using a rare comedy episode. They wouldn’t have considered inserting the DS9 characters into ‘Balance of Terror’, ‘Where No Man has Gone Before’ or ‘The Doomsday Machine’ because viewers might realise that the original Star Trek was a really great show!

I am still wondering if TOS Seasons Two and Three are ever going to make it to UK shores in the remastered HD-DVD Boxsets of a few years back? I bought Season One, and very nice it was…and now…well lets see, CBS/ Paramount have re-released it in a brand new format but haven’t released Seasons two and three in HD-DVD over here.

It doesn’t seem fair to me that you can hook someone in, who already had the DVD boxsets, with new remastered HD-DVD, and then just say “well we have this new blue-ray format to play with, and also use as an excuse so we can bleed even more money from them Trekkies, so anyone outside of the USA who is waiting for HD-DVD can just go swivel”

Too bad we can’t have ENT ‘In a Mirror, Darkly’ in HD, included as an extra on TOS S3. Besides being relevant as a sequel/prequel to ‘The Tholian Web’, it would drum up interest in owning that as the next series release for Blu ray…

I concur on “A Piece of the Action”; absolutely not on my Top Ten List, unless it’s Top Ten Episodes that Make Me Feel Uncomfortable and Make My Eyes Dart Around to Make Sure that No One Can See Me Watching This” episodes. It’s funny at times, yes, but painful at others.

45: I don’t know. CBS don’t seem to be looking beyond TOS & TNG for some reason. Marketing their films in separate sets, JJ Abrams’ film as a standalone and TOS-R in connection. Surely ENT S4 requires zero effort to put out on Blu ray, since it was both filmed and broadcast in HD. :(

According to everything I’ve heard, while the live action footage on the TNG era series were shot on film, the special effects were either shot on analog or digital video and then edited onto video with the live action elements and are thus limited to the resolution and format in which the final edited episodes are in. Thus, there’s no hope for true HD transfer unless CBS is willing to shell out at least twice the average cost of the TOS project per episode to not only redo the special effects in HD resolution, but to also recover the original film negatives for each episode and re-edit each episide with the remastered effects shots. Not saying it’s an impossible prospect, but it would be a huge investment of time and money on CBS’ part and with “Nemesis” being a flop, it’s probably an investment they’re not that confident in.

You have, unfortunately, hit the nail on the head. All the spinoffs are trapped in their native resolution because they were mastered on video. TOS (and TAS) were mastered on film, hence why it has a nice clean HD presentation.

57. Ensign RedShirt: In fairness, Enterprise is in HD, so the mirror universe episodes would be a fun bonus with The Tholian Web on a Star Trek season three set. TNG, DS9 and Voy, however are very much of their time and in SD.

I’m disappointed that CBS listened to a bunch of whining, anal fanboys and changed the design of the Star Trek season two Blu-ray. It looks plain ugly now. Vital lesson for CBS: fans are buttholes. Ignore us!!